Health, Cancer, Healthcare, Men's Health, Nutrition, Women's Health
Chris James explores the relationship between diet and disease, the nature of toxicity, and the intrinsic danger of consuming excessive quantities of animal protein in your diet.
I recently dropped in to the Body Clinic at the Urban Retreat, Harrods (as you do) to have a HYPOXI® Therapy treatment. Part of the treatment involves a statistical consultation, for which I had to stand on a machine and have tiny electrical charges pass through my body. These electrical charges measured every conceivable body mass ratio statistic, including my visceral fat! (fat around the organs). At the end of the consultation the nutritionalist informed me that I was 47% muscle! (Very good, apparently) But she then qualified this revelation by stating, “you must eat so much meat!!” to which I replied: “I don’t eat meat, I’m a vegetarian.” To which she replied “that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
The story of protein which comes from the Greek word proteios, meaning “of prime importance” is part science, part culture and a good dose of mythology. In fact nothing has been as well hidden as the story of animal protein. Ever since the discovery of this nitrogen containing chemical in 1839 by Gerhhard Mulder a Dutch scientist, protein has loomed as the most sacred of all nutrients.
As far back as the 19th century protein was synonymous with meat, and this connection has stayed with us until the present day. Indeed most people equate protein, and muscle mass with animal based food. If you were to name the first food that comes into your mind when I say protein, you might say beef or chicken – however do not worry, you are certainly not alone!
What are good sources of protein?
How much protein should one consume?
Is plant protein as good as animal protein?
Is it necessary to combine certain plant foods in a meal to get complete proteins?
Is it advisable to take protein powders or amino acid supplements, especially for someone who does rigorous exercise?
Fundamental to many of these common questions and concerns is the belief that meat is protein and protein is meat. Certainly in the 19th century, protein equaled meat, and everybody aspired to have meat on his or her table, just as we aspire to drive faster cars and have bigger houses.
Leading scientists of the time such as Max Rubner, stated that a large protein allowance and eating meat was the ‘right of civilized man.’ If you were civilized you ate plenty of animal protein, if you were rich, you ate meat, and if you were poor you ate plant foods. The lower classes were considered by some to be lazy and inept as a result of not eating enough meat.
Thus elitism and arrogance dominated much of the field of nutrition in the 19th century. The entire concept that bigger is better, more civilized, and perhaps even more spiritual permeated every thought about protein – a cultural bias had been firmly entrenched.
Protein is a vital component of our bodies and there are hundreds of thousands of different kinds, depending on how they are counted. Proteins wear out on a regular basis and must be replaced. Various food proteins are said to be of different quality depending on how well they provide the needed amino acids used to replace our body proteins.
About eight amino acids that are needed for making our tissue proteins must be provided by the food that we eat. They are called essential because our bodies cannot make them. If our food protein lacks enough of even one of these eight essential amino acids, then the synthesis of the new proteins will be slowed down or stopped. This is where the idea of protein quality comes in to play. Food proteins of the highest quality are, very simply, those that provide the right kinds and amounts of amino acids needed to efficiently synthesize new tissue proteins. That is what the word quality of proteins really means: it is the ability of food proteins to provide the right kinds and amounts of amino acids to make new proteins.
The proteins of other animals are very similar to our proteins because they mostly have the right amounts of each of the needed amino acids. These proteins are efficient and are therefore called high quality. While the lower quality plant proteins may be lacking in one or more of the essential amino acids, as a group they do contain all of them.
The concept of quality really means the efficiency which food proteins are used to promote growth. This would be well and good if the greatest efficiency equaled the greatest health – but it doesn’t! This is why the terms efficiency and quality are misleading.
In fact, there is a mountain of compelling research that demonstrates that low-quality plant protein, which allows for slow but steady synthesis of new proteins, is the healthiest type of protein. Slow but steady wins the race. (1)
This focus on efficiency of body growth, as if it were good for your health, encourages the consumption of protein with the highest quality. As any marketer will tell you, a product that is defined as being high quality instantly earns the trust of consumers. For over 100 years we have been captive to this misleading information, concluding that more quality equals more health, but it does not!
The basis for this concept of protein quality is still not well known among the general public. Even people who consume a plant-based diet will often ask, even today, “Where do I get my protein?” As if plants do not have protein! Even if it is known that plants have protein, there is still the concern about its perceived poor quality. We now know that through very complex metabolic systems, the human body can derive all the essential amino acids from the natural variety of plant proteins that we encounter every day. In fact there is a mountain of research showing that low-quality plant protein, which allows for slow but steady synthesis of new proteins, is the healthiest type of protein to imbibe, and it does not involve meticulously planning every meal! Unfortunately, the enduring concept of protein quality has greatly obscured this information.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s the UN, and the US Government Food for Peace Program, major universities and countless other organizations and universities were taking up the battle cry to eradicate the worlds hunger with high quality protein, because of a perceived protein gap. The protein gap stipulated that world hunger and malnutrition among children in the third world was a result of not having enough protein to consume, especially high quality animal protein. (2) As a result of this, projects were springing up all over the place to address this perceived protein gap.
And it is precisely against this rush for curing the world’s protein gap, came along, quite accidentally one of the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries of the last 100 years; its implications for human health and longevity are profound and far reaching.
It actually all started by chance in a project funded by the US Agency for International Development in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The primary goal of this project was to improve the state of childhood malnutrition in the world.
Part of this project became an investigation into the unusually high prevalence of liver cancer, usually an adult disease in Philipino children. It was thought that ‘Aflatoxin’, a mould found in peanuts and corn, a staple of Philipino households was to blame. ‘Aflatoxin’ happens to be one of the most powerful carcinogens ever discovered and was actually used in Agent Orange, the dreadful herbicide used to defoliate forests in the Vietnam War.
It was through this particular project and studies that had already previously been conducted in England and India that was to challenge the very foundation of what was commonly held to be historically true and ‘scientific’ – are you ready for it?
What if there was a chemical that experimentally turned on cancer in 100% of cases? Surely, finding such a chemical would be the Holy Grail of cancer research, would it not? – The implication for human health would be enormous. One would assume that this chemical would be of considerably more concern than any of the dangerous carcinogens such as aflatoxin or nitrates? Still guessing? Do you have any idea what this chemical might be? You’ve guessed it haven’t you?
(1) 1The China Study, T Collins Campbell
(2) “The effect of protein deficiency on the in vivo binding of aflatoxin B, to rat liver macromolecules.” Life Sci.19 (1976): 1721 – 1732.
